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Captain ^ooD0on ^« ^atisball 

©CtOllft 5» 1905 



.5 




ANNUAL ADDRESS 



CAPTAIN WOODSON S. MARSHALL. 



Mr. President, Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

Recently while in the city of Raleigh, North Carolina, I stood 
in the Senate chamber and looked upon the scene where the So- 
ciety of the Army of the Tennessee, two score years ago, was con- 
ceived and brought forth, dedicated to the lofty purpose of 
keeping alive and preserving that kindly and cordial feeling 
which had been one of the characteristics of that army during its 
career in the service, and consecrated to the sacred trust of pre- 
serving and transmitting the fame and glory of all the officers 
belonging to the Army of the Tennessee who had fallen in battle 
or in the line of duty. 

In a revolting State, amidst bristling bayonets, the clank of 
.sabers, the din of arms, the roar of cannon and all the panoplies 
of active, insistent warfare, and while pressing hard a wary and 
determined foe, this Society came into being and around it stood 
the "Old Guard" with mailed hands and drawn swords, and in 
whose stern, relentless faces there was written in no uncertain 
lines their unalterable purpose of "victory or death," and over 
whom there waved then as now the stars and stripes, and in de- 
fense of which those bronzed and seasoned soldiers had attested 
their fealty and proved their valor on a hundred crimson battle- 
fields. 

Fitting place indeed for the organization of this Society, for it 
was within the very shadow of King's Mountain, whence came, 
a century before, the earliest whisper of independence. 

In its infancy the hands which rocked the cradle were the 
hands that four long years before had with supreme courage 
flung their glinting swords into the sunlight, and pressing on- 
ward, without a single defeat, marched from the Ohio River 
southward almost to the Gulf, from the banks of the Mississippi 



eastward to the shores of the Atlantic, 'and thence northward 
through the Carolinas. 

The songs which rang out in that old State House, where four 
and a quarter years before, resolutions to secede from the Union 
had, with great enthusiasm, been adopted, were by heroic voices 
attimed to music whose highest key was "Onward" and whose 
staccato note was "Unconditional and immediate surrender." 

As to how unerringly its lines along lofty planes were drawn; 
have ever since been maintained and its loving purposes accom- 
plished, let the resultant history of this splendid organization 
give answer; the cordial greetings and affectionate heart throbs 
of its members through four decades make reply. 

Macedonia gave to Greece Alexander the Great ; the city of 
Romulus gave to Rome Julius Caesar; the island of Corsica gave 
to France Napoleon Bonaparte, and Virginia gave to the Colonies 
the immortal AVashington, while now we are met within the bor- 
ders of the great State of Ohio, which gave to the Army of the 
Tennessee and through it to the nation and the world that match- 
less quartette of military chieftains. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan 
and McPherson. 

Aye, more, for we have assembled in that city where General 
Grant, having reached the supreme command of the army, de- 
veloped and made known to General Sherman his plans for the 
concerted and simultaneous movement of all the great armies in 
the field, the result of which, brilliantly conceived, heroically 
and masterfully executed, within one year thereafter crushed out 
the most gigantic rebellion in the history of the world. 

In contemplation of that remarkable feat, it is eminently 
proper to consider the vast aggregation of human power that was 
brought together from civil life, concentrated and molded into 
great driving engines of destructive warfare, which finally moved 
forward concurrently with resistless energy, in the execution of 
an unparalleled campaign, covering one thousand miles of front, 
under the direction and leadership of a commanding general of 
transcendent military genius, supplemented by the services of his 
great lieutenants, who displayed in the successful execution of 
that stupendous movement such extraordinary abilities that they 
not only brought immortal fame to themselves, but i3overed with 
glory every soldier engaged in that unsurpassed achievement. 

From whence then came these masters of the art of war? 
These volunteers from the civil walks of life? Whence the rank 
and file of their intrepid armies, drilled and disciplined into 



platoons and solid columns, more efficient and invincible than 
Wellington's "Old Guard" at Waterloo or Roman legions led 
on by Caesar, when their unbroken tread shook the earth. 

When grim-visa ged war came out of the South marching beneath 
a rebellious flag, Ulysses S. Grant was a private citizen, clerking 
in a small store in the State of Illinois. Turning his back upon 
affairs commercial, he entered the army and thereafter became 
the most potent factor in the great Civil War and easily the most 
colossal figure in an arena where giants with sullen courage meas- 
ured their strength for military supremacy. 

William T. Sherman resigned the superintendency of a small 
military academy in the State of Louisiana, and, taking up arms, 
threw himself with great force against a brave adversary as well 
as a skillful commander ; beat him back in many sanguinary en- 
gagements; and, in the daily warfare around Atlanta, out- 
generaled and forced him into a disastrous retreat. 

Having demonstrated by the successful execution of unex- 
celled campaigns that he was a great strategist, extraordinary 
tactician and fearless leader of men, he became second in com- 
mand only because General Grant was first. 

Francis P. Blair, Jr., when hostilities broke out, was a lawyer 
in the city of St. Louis, but he was not Janus-faced. With in- 
flexible courage he stood for the government at Washington ; laid 
his pen down upon an unfinished brief, and went into the army. 
Turning his forceful character and great abilities into military 
channels, he won laurels as a corps commander on fields where 
grape, canister and solid shot held high carnival ; became one 
of the great volunteer generals and wrote, with the point of his 
sword, an unanswerable brief in behalf of constitutional liberty 
and human rights. 

John A. Logan resigned a seat in Congress, entered the service, 
and fought his way up from the command of a regiment to the 
command of the Army of the Tennessee. And he alone of all its 
great commanders won that proud distinction while battle raged, 
though it came to him across the lifeless body of the heroic and 
deeply deplored IMcPhersou. 

General Logan knew no fear, was pre-eminently a fighter, 
trusted by his superiors and adored by his army. And in imag- 
ination you can see him now, mounted on his spirited steed, 
booted and spurred with visor down ; his black eyes flashing fire, 
his sword held aloft; his vehement, deep-toned voice sounding 
above the din and roar of battle, nerving every man to deeds of 



heroism, as he swings a column of his brave boys into line and 
hurls them with irresistible force against the veteran legions of 
the South. 

Grenville M. Dodge, our own versatile and inimitable presi- 
dent, when the guns of Sumter reverberated across the prairies 
and struck his ear, was a civil engineer engaged in building one 
of our principal railways. At once he set a stake in the ground 
firmly, noted its number, leaned his tripod up in the corner of a 
log cabin out West, threw a sheepskin over it, and volunteered. 
He rendered invaluable service wherever assigned to duty, how- 
ever arduous, difficult or dangerous, and through the sheer force 
of personal merit won the rank of major-general. Enjoying the 
full confidence of General Grant, he was assigned to speciall;^ 
hazardous duties. He passed the most anxious moments of his 
life when he saw, at the battle of Atlanta, Hardee's entire corps, 
three times his number, strike the thin line of the Sixteenth 
Corps of the Army of the Tennessee, until he saw that corps 
stand, and, beating back charge after charge, stand — stand until 
at last it drove the enemy from the field with an awful slaughter 
and held that blood-soaked battle line. 

When peace came he went back to that old log cabin, took up 
that same tripod; verified the theodolite, and, looking up the 
number of that stake, renewed his work ; built the Union Pacific 
Railroad across plains and hills, gulches and rivers; wound 
around great altitudes ; swung bridges across canons ; tunneled 
through and crossed over "mountains rock-ribbed and ancient as 
the sun"; "joined tracks" on Promontory Summit, thus complet- 
ing the first great national highway, binding together the mad 
and ever restless Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific, 
whose placid waters are amber and whose sands are gold. 

The accomplished, faithful and deeply beloved General ]\Ic- 
Pherson and the gallant soldier and Christian gentleman, General 
Howard, were each in the regular army when the war came on, 
though thereafter they won proud rank in the command of vol- 
unteer troops. 

Such in brief were our marvelous commanders, but what of the 
officers and the men who composed the regiments, brigades and 
divisions, and which combined, formed the corps and constituted 
the immense armies which they led on to victory? Whence did 
they come and what were they when the tocsin of war aroused 
the people of the North to the realization of conditions, not 
theories ? 



Vv'e may safely assume that no army of such versatility will 
ever again be marshaled in this country. We were then essen- 
tially a nation of individuals, independent, self-reliant, aggres- 
sive and courageous. 

We were also at that time in the flush and glow of health ; in 
the splendid development of our physical manhood, the product 
of arduous and incessant contest with imperial forests and virgin 
soils — in making farms and roads, in bridging rivers, in digging 
canals and in constructing railways, in building homes and towns 
and cities. In a masterful effort to transform unbroken wilder- 
ness, a wild, non-productive continent into a new purpose, the 
support and maintenance of a large and ever-increasing popu- 
lation. 

The merchant, the banker, the schoolmaster, the physician, the 
lawyer and the minister of the gospel, the mechanic and the com- 
mon laborer, as well as he who assailed with his keen-edged axe 
the great trees; men with brain and brawn in every vocation 
battled with the elements and grew strong and muscular in the 
ceaseless and unrelenting struggle. 

When the call to arms was sounded these men with hardened 
sinews and elastic footsteps came tripping into camp, bringing 
their splendid health and their earnest valor with them, to be 
equipped, drilled and transformed into soldiers. To lead a new 
life ; to learn the bitter lessons of inexorable war. 

Draw aside the curtain and once again look upon that passing 
scene in all its earnest intensity. Behold mariners slipping out 
of the rigging of their vessels ; mechanics leaving their shops ; 
carpenters climbing from the roofs of houses; miners throwing 
down their picks and shovels, and farmers leaving their plows in 
unfinished furrows ; engineers whistling down brakes and leaping 
from their cabs; merchants forsaking their countingrooms ; 
judges laying aside the ermine ; lavv^^ers their briefs ; ministers 
forsaking their pulpits, physicians their patients, and whole 
classes in college throwing do^vn their books and all volunteering 
to be converted into sweeping columns of destructive warfare. 

Aye more, they poured out of the cities and towns and villages 
and hamlets; from over the hillsides and prairies; across our 
plains ; down from the mountains and up from the valleys, im- 
measurably strong, earnest and patriotic to serve their country 
and if needs be rush upon the altar an eager sacrifice that this 
government might endure and that "liberty might not perish from 
off the earth." 



6 

As organized it was not only an army of physical might, but 
impressively and predominantly one of brain power, educated, dis- 
ciplined and capable of vast achievements. In all that aggrega- 
tion of two millions three hundred and thirty thousand men, there 
was scarcely a regiment, and surely not a division, not qualified 
for successfully meeting any emergencj^ ; not a regiment or a 
division that without fear would not cope with any demand and 
obey without protest any order however exacting or perilous. 

Occasion requires it, and there are volunteers to repair and 
operate a railroad or a telegraph line ; to man and to run a steam- 
boat or a flouring mill; to build roadways, to construct bridges 
and pontoons over bayous, swamps and rivers at floodtide. 

They could have supplied a university, a law school, a medical 
college or a theological seminary with a corps of professors, 
built a city and administered its affairs, and, given a territory, 
with blank paper, could have drawn a constitution, republican in 
form, democratic in principle, written a code of laws, set the 
machinery of government in operation and filled every office, 
executive, judicial and legislative, with eminent ability. 

Such men composed the rank and file, as well as the field and 
staf¥, of the late immense army ; in fame illustrious because of its 
great commanders and invincible because of the class of men 
behind the guns, out upon the firing lines, facing the enemy, 
struggling with the adversary in a war of great bitterness. 

Deterred by no danger, unabashed at obstacles, however ap- 
palling, they steadily advanced and in a great crisis sprang to 
the front, and without orders, ofttimes pushed right on, sweeping 
the field, or scaling fortifications, driving out the enemy and 
there exultantly unfurling their banner. 

In battle each man fought as if the conflict was all his own; 
the wage his fireside, while in a larger sense he knew that the real 
prize was an unbroken union, the reward human liberty and con- 
stitutional government. 

Given a stake, a plat of ground called home, the badge of a 
freeman, and the Union soldier fought with great courage, won- 
derful enthusiasm and unyielding tenacity of purpose. 

Wellington declared that the battle of Waterloo was won upon 
the cricket fields of Eton. The battles for the Union were won 
by volunteers from palace and hovel ; from hills and plains ; from 
fields and forge ; men from every vocation in the great north- 
land ; those who strove dauntlessly in the sphere of action and 
vied with each other in patriotic duty, in unsM'^erving devotion to 



a great cause, and brooking no opposition, moved "forward in 
the right as God gave them to see the right." Being inflexible 
in purpose, unyielding in allegiance to the government, they 
knew no fear, acknowledged no defeat as possible ; they assailed 
with supreme gallantry avouched impregnable walls, and scaled 
with alacrity supposed impossible heights. 

You are not unmindful that when you saw a long line of men in 
blue, with guns gleaming in the sunlight, moving steadily against 
the enemy or heroically beating back a ferocious charge by a de- 
termined foe ; your men being mowed down by shot and shell, that 
amidst the revolting spectacle there would come up before you a 
sweet, placid face of the long ago, when in some log cabin, humble 
cottage, or well appointed home, you, then a little boy kneeling 
beside your mother, listening to her gentle voice as she read to 
you out of her well-worn Bible, teaching you its salutary prin- 
ciples, how through that vision your every nerve was strung to 
its utmost tension, your heart throbs quickened and you highly 
resolved honorably to survive or gloriously perish on that field 
of battle. 

Pass by the great commanders and immense armies ; let the 
corps, divisions, brigades and regiments stand aside ; enter the 
ranks of a single company and from the officers and men who 
swept the field with the bayonet, heard the ping and ail-too fre- 
quently felt the sting of bullet, the gash of saber, and beyond 
patriotic duty learn from them something of the inspiration that 
lifted them above mere machines, drilled and disciplined hu- 
manity, out into the radiant sunbeams of personal heroism. 

Comrades of the rank and file, let us rake together upon^the 
altars of our hearts the dying embers of more than two score 
years ago, and, blowing for a little life, see if these smoldering 
remnants will not again glow with the fondest recollections and 
thus individualize the whole volunteer army. 

Captain, do you remember that as you crossed the threshold 
and turned away from the old home how your sainted mother 
dropped into your pocket a little Bible, consecrated with her 
tears, and which thereafter you carried as a talisman into every 
battle, praying if you fell, that she might know that your last 
thoughts were of her and her God? 

Lieutenant, do you recollect a serene girlish face, a 

"Minerva graceful with azure eyes," 
with whom you had taken a solemn vow before the war came on, 



8 

whose picture was hid away in the case of your watch and on 
the opposite side of which there was a small counterpart of 

Sergeant, have you forgotten how you treasured a lock of nut- 
brown hair, which you at the old farm gate stole by permission 
from the head of a country lassie who was all the world to you, 
and then kissing an upturned, tear-stained face for the last time, 
hastened to fields soon to become war-stained? 

Corporal, is memory not yet green, how at the trysting place 
you repeated to a maiden fair that "old, old story" and pressing 
your lips upon curls black as a raven's wing, which had fallen 
across a brow white as marble, you whispered in vibrant tones : 
"I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more," 
and you were off to the war. 

The most touching remembrance of all, however, is found in 
the unselfish patriotism and loyalty to duty of that idolized, hand- 
some knight, the ever onward and ever hopeful. General James 
B. IMcPherson, who, turning aside from the marriage altar to 
lead his invincible Army of the Tennessee on the bloody but vic- 
torious field of Atlanta to there fall upon the altar of his country, 
wearing upon his heart the image of his betrothed. 

Shall these and kindred sacred memories, which ran through 
the hearts and lives of our valiant armies from the commanding 
generals down to the boys who stood on the outposts, and which 
were ever an additional inspiration for imfaltering duty, and at 
a time when they were young and strong, and handsome, and 
brave and patriotic, be forgotten? I answer never, until "your 
right hand forgets its cunning and your tongue cleaves to the 
roof of your mouth." 

But do you say in this matter-of-fact, this commercial and ma- 
terialistic age, that all this is mere sentiment and shoulU find no 
place in the travails of a nation, in the hearts of a soldiery whose 
pathway ran across fields red with human gore and whose duties 
rested alone where havoc and carnage held unlimited sway ? 

Then I answer that it was Union sentiment which upheld the 
Government during the dark days of the rebellion and supported 
the army while it marched victoriously through every revolting 
State and crushed out rebellion between the two oceans. 

It was sentiment which built General Grant 's magnificent tomb 
on the banks of the Hudson and erected splendid equestrian 
statues to the memories of Sherman, IMcPherson and Logan. It 
was sentiment that caused the revolt of the colonies; brought on 



mmmk 



9 

the war of 1812 ; incited the rebellion, upheld our armies through- 
out four years of bitter war and enabled the soldiers for the 
Union to bear aloft the stars and stripes on the ensanguined fields 
of Shiloh, Champion Hills, Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, Franklin, 
Antietam and Gettysburg ; to unfurl it over the fortifications of 
Vicksburg; to witness it kiss the clouds on Lookout Mountain, 
and to behold it at last, all glorious, waving triumphant at Ap- 
pomattox. 

Emerson said that "Napoleon would shorten a straight line in 
order to come to a point." 

General Grant with equal directness, when he started on the 
Wilderness campaign, said: "If Lee is willing I will reach Rich- 
mond in four days ; if Lee is not willing, then — longer. ' ' 

He grasped immense war problems with great tenacity of pur- 
pose, and with apparent ease solved and simplified them. He was 
superb in attack and relentless in his onward course. Once his 
plans were laid, with a clear vision and keen penetration he 
seemed to see through and beyond the storm-center of clashing 
armies, for he persistently advanced, retreating — never. 

Von Moltke, it is said, "was silent in seven languages." Grant 
was silent in one, but his actions spoke every tongue, living and 
dead. 

Great commanders we had, but there was not a subordinate 
general in the Army of the Tennessee, had disaster come, but 
would have contended for the honor of echoing the declaration 
of Marshal Ney to Napoleon: "I alone, sire, am the rear guard 
of the grand army." 

General Grant was the great central military light of the late 
Civil War and around him stood many stars of the first magnitude, 
but I entreat you to forget not the rank and file of the splendid 
armies which they commanded; that innumerable host of silent 
stars which lit up and made glorious the sky of victory and whose 
intrepid courage, unswerving devotion to duty and strict obedi- 
ence to orders rendered success possible and victory an ultimate 
reality. 

Men who, hungry, footsore and fatigued uncomplainingly made 
long forced marches by day and by night ; in sunshine — blistering 
where it struck, and in rain — freezing where it fell. 

Men who forded swollen streams, cut off the enemy's supplies, 
captured and held the outposts. 

]Men who, in the four years of dreadful strife, of the intensest 
struggle for the mastery, met on "two thousand three hundred 



10 

stricken fields of blood," and beat back the serried hosts of the 
South. 

]\Ien who in the face of belching cannons and bristling bayonets 
scaled fortifications and held them or let their silent, upturned 
faces, kissed by pale moonbeams, tell the story why not, when 
their comrades later on came upon the scene of slaughter. 

Men who with firm-set jaws smiled when that awful rebel yell 
came sweeping along, the precursor of a charge by as brave men 
as ever drew saber, swung a battle axe or hurled a javelin. 

Men who laughed at hissing, whizzing bullets and bursting, 
screeching shells, and in the face of it all swept the field with the 
bayonet. 

]Men who withstood that awful rain of shot and canister, hour 
in and hour out, at Missionary Ridge, and who, though great fur- 
rows were plowed through their ranks, "closed up" and moved 
on to victory. 

Men who crossed the Mississippi River, burned their bridges 
behind them and saw the bridges burning in front of them, 
fought their way against a stubborn foe to Vicksburg and cap- 
tured that Gibraltar of the South. 

IMen who steadily pushed their way from valley and foothills 
upward and still on, clambered over precipitous heights, scaled 
craggy peaks above the clouds and out in the clear sunshine 
flashed their guns on Lookout Mountain and planted "Old 
Glory" there. 

Men who, ever on the alert, drove the brave and determined 
Confederate army inch by inch, up to, through and beyond At- 
lanta, and thence, turning their faces eastward, with great 
courage swung out on that long march to the sea ; the conception 
and successful achievement of which stands without a parallel in 
the military history of the world. 

Men who thereafter turned their faces northward, laughed at 
hardships, at bitter privations and long, forced marches, scoffed 
at fear, defied the elements, knew no barriers, but unchecked 
marched on, though opposed by fortifications, by swamps, by 
rivers and by mountains. The South looked on at all this in- 
credible audacity, predicting advancement beyond certain limits 
impossible and final defeat a consequent result; but the army 
with giant strides pressed forward, overcoming all obstacles and 
with renewed determination day by day brushed aside all oppo- 
sition, however formidable. 

]\Ien who, under General Sherman, that remarkable strategist 



11 

and fearless leader, severed the Confederacy in twain, and while 
Southern chivalry stood paralyzed and aghast, doubting, hesitat- 
ing which way to turn, swept a pathway through the very heart 
of the rebellious States and vanquished their adversaries by this 
more than Napoleonic rapidity of movement, unmatched and un- 
precedented warfare. 

In this meed of praise to the rank and file of our victorious 
armies, the brave boys 

"Who felt their muscles steeled 
For deeds which men may never know, 
Nor page of history ever show," 

whom you commanded, and in whom you had unlimited faith, 
and upon whom, in the most urgent emergencies, even to the lead- 
ing of the forlorn hope, you relied, I am impressed that I but 
echo the sentiment of each comrade of this Society, and which 
strain runs like a golden thread through every address from the 
masterful oration of General Rawlins, delivered in this beautiful 
and ever-hospitable city, at our first annual meeting, thirty and 
nine years ago, to the present all-glorious occasion. 

During that epoch-making period, when heroes strove with 
giants on the battlefield for the mastery ; when tangled groups of 
dogged survivors alone were left on crimsoned soil — soil evi- 
dencing the fact that others had there paid the last full measure 
of devotion to a patriotic cause, I declare that your hands were 
then upon chords whose resonant notes will go echoing down the 
ages and along every avenue songs of praise in behalf of human 

liberty, 

"With power almost divine." 

It is a significant fact fraught with the deepest interest to our 
American manhood and sterling courage, that during the four 
years of stressful war; of marching and fighting; of advancing 
and retreating; of driving and being driven across stubbornly 
contested fields, crimson dyed; that no final decisive battle was 
fought; no crowning victory won; no overwhelming defeat suf- 
fered in any engagement, and however appalling the loss, the 
retiring army "picked afresh its flints" and in a few days re- 
newed the fight \vith courage unabated. 

The many hard-fought battles ; the doggedness of the contest ; 
the long-drawn-out years of relentless war in that gigantic con- 
test, which cost the lives of almost three-quarters of a million of 
men, North and South, and ten billions of money, finds no parallel 



12 

in the record of all the past. Casualties so awful had never been 
known m war between nations, but it must be remembered that 
such foes were never in the history of the world face to face be- 
fore ; that a new gage of battle was fixed ; a loftier character 
stamped upon personal and collective heroism. 

This "steel flashing to steel," "diamond cutting diamond," 
between great military commanders ; this awful carnage ; vast 
waste of treasure ; severe test of long-drawn-out human endur- 
ance ; this sapping of nerve power; hope deferred; painful agony 
of suspense ; this swinging in the balance and still contesting 
banners flaunting defiance above great armies aligned for battle, 
finds a solution only, I submit, in the answer given by Henry 
"Ward Beecher, while addressing a mass meeting at Manchester, 
England, in 1863, explaining why that country should not recog- 
nize the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and telling 
why, in his judgment, the Union should be preserved, when some 
one in the audience cried out : ' ' Then why don 't you put down 
the rebellion?" Mr. Beecher 's steel-gray eyes flashed, his strong 
right arm shot out, as he replied: "Because we are fighting 
Americans and not Englishmen." 

However, it was most gratifying to observe that when Appo- 
mattox came, these same unflinching men of heroic mold and 
valor undismayed, shook hands across the bloody chasm ; divided 
their rations ; drank from the same canteen, and setting the pace 
for a new commercial age of great prosperity, by exchanging 
Northern hair-splitting war stories for Southern blood-curdling 
experiences, peacefully returned to "their spring plowing," for 
cotton and rice in the South, for corn and wheat in the North; 
grateful that the misunderstanding had at last been settled and 
all the hatchways on the "Old Ship of State" securely nailed 
down forever. 

And now at the close of forty years since the curtain was rung 
down on the last act played in that great war drama, we look 
back and review with commendable pride the unparalleled scene 
of that victorious army of one million five hundred and sixteen 
thousand veteran soldiers quietly retviruing to their several 
homes, their various vocations; doffing military trappings and 
donning citizens' garb, and each once more gathering up here 
and there the raveled edges of life, and going forward to weave 
out the pattern just as bravel};- as if he had not turned aside to 
assist in stamping out a rebellion of unequaled magnitude ; work- 
ing out in patience thereafter his allotment in the vineyard, at- 



13 

testing thereby his good citizenship. This was the kind of fiber 
the American soldier was made of; loyal to his country, to his 
State, to his fireside and to his God. 

The Army of the Tennessee "fought a good fight", and it is 
gratifying to know that in civil life it has "kept the faith". It 
has filled every office in the gift of the people from President of 
the United States down through all grades, even to local affairs, 
with marked ability and strict integrity. More especially has it 
nobly performed its duty as private citizen, in manual labor, 
agriculture, manufacture, commerce and as skilled artisans ; as 
civil engineers engaged in the construction of our vast systems 
of transportation, rail and waterways. In the building up of 
our great cities and extensive internal improvements. Men who 
have sought no office, craved no notoriety save that which comes 
from the genius of unending toil, and upon whom the strength, 
the success, the prosperity and the preservation of our institu- 
tions so largely depends. 

In every field of our marvelous improvement, where great cour- 
age, persistent labor, genuine skill and genius of a high order 
were required, you and your associates in arms have not only 
stood upon the ramparts, but have "hung your banners on the 
outer walls" and pressed forward great undertakings to the bet- 
terment of local communities, to the enrichment of the several 
States and to the honor of this unmatched Eepublic. 

Who can estimate how much of our wonderful progress, of our 
unprecedented growth, the doing of things and the doing of them 
right, can be traced back to the lessons learned, the discipline 
gained by men while in the army during the Civil War? 

Who can calculate the knowledge acquired through the con- 
centration of power and the example of energetic action put into 
execution during that four years of strenuous warfare and there- 
after carried forward into vast enterprises, on land and sea, es- 
sential to the increasing demands of the age, to the exigencies of 
this country's rapid growth? 

Who knows how much of order, system and self-reliant man- 
hood made manifest by men in daily life throughout every baili- 
wick in this broad domain can be traced back to the self-sacrifice, 
the hardships and discipline of the troops during the acrimonious 
war of the rebellion? 

Remember that it was Grant and Sherman and Sheridan who 
blotted out of our lexicons the word "can't", and who inserted 
in lieu thereof the words "go in". That it was our great com- 



14 

mander who set aside all precedent in military ethics by never 
calling a council of war, but who issued instead irrevocable or- 
ders to his illustrious field marshals to be opened at 4 o'clock in 
the morning: "You will attack the enemy at daylight"; and 
these lessons were so impressed upon the army that when it was 
dissolved and its component parts returned to peaceful vocations, 
that individually they have ever since been "going in" and they 
are still "attacking the enemy at daylight." 

If in obedience to this injunction, when Commodore Dewey on 
that beautiful May morning in IManila Bay, issued his laconic 
order, "Fire as soon as you get ready, Gridley, " it meant the 
swinging outward, upon their rusty and creaking hinges, the 
doors to the East and this nation's moving forward and upward 
and eastward in the rich development and civilization of the 
world, beyond the knowledge of the wise man, the ken of seer 
or vision of prophet, let us join in that splendid anthem^ 

"God moves in a mysterious way 

His wonders to perform. 
He plants Hisi footsteps in the sea 

And rides upon the storm." 

The South, with unlimited faith, boundless enthusiasm and ab- 
solute loyalty to a principle which she believed to be right, struck 
out with great courage, gloried in her declaration of war, and 
through which thousands of her gallant sons, evincing the su- 
premest human courage, the sublimest faith in an ultimate tri- 
umph, went to untimely graves; and though she was thereby 
forced to "tred the winepress in sorrow", to "drain to the bit- 
ter dregs the cup of defeat", to feel in every nerve the scourge 
and devastation of large contesting armies marching and coun- 
termarching throughout all her territory until that once fair 
land was stricken and paralyzed in body and limb, we are re- 
joiced to know that, Phoenix-like, she has arisen from her ashes 
and that she stands forth today in the plentitude of her material 
progress, in the grandeur of her wonderful development and in 
the beauty of her educational, moral and Christian excellence, a 
vast power in the aggregation of States, in an unbroken Union, 
and in an unequaled Republic. 

The reaper that knows no pity has passed within our lines, and 
thrusting in his keen-edged sickle here and there, has gathered his 
sheaves and garnered his harvest of rich, golden grain from our 
ranks mitil today more of our associates are marshaled on the 



15 

eternal camping grounds than are gathered here on the banks of 
the beautiful Ohio, but their memories, their unselfish loyalty, 
patriotic devotion to duty and invaluable services to their coun- 
try will remain with us a sacred heritage. 

AVhen this society was formed, if the ties that bound you then 
were silver chains, forged in camp, on the march, in bivouac and 
on the battlefield during four years of wrathful war, at the end 
of two score years of peace, having passed the crucial test of 
life's civil ordeals, the links that bind you now are burnished 
gold, glittering with diamonds, the trophies of victories won, 
peaceful and not war-stained. 

Standing in the gray dawn of the twentieth century, bearing 
forward without loss as a Republic all the acquisitions of the 
past, with a national consciousness of strength, a personal con- 
sciousness of duty, an enlarged possibility for good, may we not 
indulge the hope that the pendulum of commercialism has reached 
its limit ; that henceforth the pendulum of idealism may swing 
upward, to the betterment of the American people, to the glory 
of the respective States, to the nation's exaltation in its majestic 
march beneath the stars and stripes for truth, for liberty, for 
peace, for righteousness, and for the universal rights of man 
throughout the civilized world. 



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